Alright, good. What about your own fpt dumped ME Region at 1.55MB? The one you uploaded HERE that is. I'm sorry about all the questions & reflashing I'm asking of you but I've never seen someone not being able to flash Intel's ME Region image before with that error. I want to see if for some reason it does not allow full region updates but it does allow update ones on your system.

I'll be moving the following update firmware request from post to post so that is can be seen by someone with a 9.5 ME system. You can ignore it.

Well, that shouldn't have anything to do with it. Intel is responsible for ME, not Apple. Anyway, if you want try the full 1.55MB region you dumped earlier to see it doesn't accept region images but only Update ones for some weird reason. Otherwise wait for someone to give us an update file to test.

Alright, this is strange. We'll wait until someone can create an update image so you can test that.

@All:

For those with a ME 9.5 consumer (1.5MB) system and firmware v9.5.41.1904 applied: Can you please make an update file of your ME firmware using the command FWUpdLcl -save UPD.bin and attach it for me here?

Thanks a lot! But it also didn't work. The same Error 8746: Firmware update not initiated due to invalid image length. Just to compare, your dumped update-image is 1,19 MB, mine native from Mac is 944 KB.

My dump ends on the offset line EBFF0, while there is still a lot of code in yours dump on that line till the end of the image.

Bottom line: ME firmware on Macs is not upgradable in its traditional way which is described here on the 1st page. Seems like Apple is really using some custom-build images for its ME firmware.

First of all, thank you very much RimZ for your firmware update file. It seems that indeed the ME is different, but I still don't believe it's MAC-specific as you said. It could be different FITC settings causing that. Regarding the $SKU number of each given firmware:

@Lipid: What exact MAC model do you have? I'd like to see it's specs and hardware, that's why I ask.

@lordkag: Do you think the $SKU can change as a result of different FITC configuration and does not only rely on whether it's a 1.5MB or 5MB image? Maybe different FITC settings produce a different SKU variant. For example, could there exist 2 types of 1.5MB SKU?

Apple would need to ask Intel for any modification, since only them can sign the ME firmware. What could they ask that can't be changed in the settings and how would they know it, without Intel source code? The firmware should work in theory, the error seems to be in the image length.

By comparing the settings in FITC with 9.5.41.1904, I see no major difference. Also, the SKU wouldn't make any difference, since FITC only offers Premium and Mainstream. Apple ME is just a variant of Premium SKU.

By comparing saved and region dumps, it would seem that in 9.5.x firmware you can obtain an update image by just cutting from $MN2 sections until the end. Rimz saved image also confirms this. If that image didn't worked, then it might be more to it.

I don't have an older ME to compare, but Apple might have asked some portions to be removed from ME. Thus, not the entire image length is the problem, but individual sections are larger than expected by Apple. Only from another Mac you could try to take the ME, but it seems that is the last image in latest Mac firmwares: 9.5.3.1526 mobile and 9.0.5.1367 desktop.